


King

by Linden



Series: Seven Devils [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 22:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4978687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam dreamed of yellow eyes, and an iron throne, and a broken, burning crown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	King

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to leave _Match for the Keyhole_ alone as a little AU one-shot, but there's an AU 'verse about Sam and his powers and demons and the winter solstice kinda scratchin' at my brain. Good idea? Bad idea? All feedback, as always, will be welcomed with thanks and a shriek of delight and quite possibly a plate of brownies.
> 
> Series title hails from Flo + the Machine's freakin' fabulous [_Seven Devils_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBcXe2B97TQ).

**21 December 1997**

Sam dreamed of yellow eyes, and an iron throne, and a broken, burning crown.

He dreamed of black dogs at his side, and of the taste of blood in his mouth, and of the smell of sulfur on his skin; he dreamed of the destruction of cities, and he dreamed of the green green eyes and blood-splattered skin of a dead man he could not, would not, name.

Sam dreamed of sibilant voices caressing him like a hundred different hands as they murmured, _king, our king, the boy king, hail_.

He woke, shaking, on a coil of fear and sick, inexplicable satisfaction. It took him a moment to remember where he was— _Nebraska; no, we left Nebraska; Bobby's, we're at Bobby's_ —but no time at all to remember that he felt like hell: his chest hurt and his throat was scratchy and his mouth tasted like cough medicine, and he felt _cold_ , somehow, chilled straight to his marrow even in the cozy nest of blankets he was cuddled up in. He wasn't certain whether that was thanks to chills from the fever he could still feel prickling all along his clammy skin or from the eerie horror of that crown, but he was definitely miserable, all the same. He burrowed deeper into the old bed, trying to warm up, trying to shake the lingering strangeness of his dream. There was an . . . an echo, of sorts, still rattling around inside his skull, like a thousand serpents hissing, and it was creepy and felt strangely familiar and he wished that he had his brother's solid warmth to curl into against it. But when Sam had shuffled up to bed an hour ago, Dean had still been on the phone with some stupid _girl_ he'd met at the gas mart, and though Sam wanted to imagine her as a big dumb cow, or maybe even as a cousin to a raw head, he was sure she was pretty and clever and funny and sweet, like Dean's girls always were, and he was sure she already knew the taste of his brother's mouth and the feel of his beautiful, capable hands on her skin. 

The heat of the wretched jealousy in his chest did nothing to warm his bones.

Cold and alone and frightened and lonely, he rolled onto his stomach and over onto Dean's side of the bed, wrapped his arms around his brother's pillow and pushed his face into it, breathing in the familiar scent of Dean's shampoo and hair gel and skin. It smelled like home and comfort and safety, the same way it had ever since he was little, and it made him a little dizzy with helpless hopeless _wanting_ , the same way it had ever since he'd turned twelve, and he rocked his hips against the mattress a few times, idle and slow—not near enough friction to get anywhere, really, but his cock was thickening a little at the warmth of Dean's scent, and rubbing against something soft and firm felt good. As sleep came creeping back up to pull him under again, he let himself imagine that it was his brother's long body he was cradled against, let himself pretend that his face was tucked into the warm soft crook of Dean's neck instead of his pillow. _Dean,_ he thought, sleepily, _Dean, Dean,_ and he was asleep again before the clock turned over to nine.

***

His cough and fever woke him, maybe an hour later, from a dream of a girl hanging dead from an old wooden tower, a lily blooming in her mouth. Outside, the world was roaring.

It frightened him for half a heartbeat, the huge empty sourceless sound, until he realized that it was nothing but the wind from a blizzard waking on the grasslands. He lay curled on his side coughing quietly for a minute, his sleep tee soaked through now with sweat at his pits and collar, and then he forced himself out of his snug cocoon to grab the bottle of Cheratussin on the night stand. He knocked back a slug of it, then another, drinking straight from the bottle because it's what Dean and their father always did, even if his brother had been carefully measuring Sam's own medicine out by capfuls or teaspoons ever since they'd been kids. The stuff turned his stomach but settled his chest, and after a minute more of sitting in the dark he got up to rummage through the med kit in Dean's bag for a thermometer. _King,_ he thought he heard, softly, in the whisper of the zipper sliding along its track, and shook his head, muzzily. His hands were unsteady, felt thick-fingered and clumsy; it took him two tries to get the thermometer in his mouth. He flinched at the number glowing up at him from the digital readout a moment later, popped the Tylenol bottle to swallow two of them dry, thought about getting back into bed. Shrugged himself out of his damp tee instead and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and shuffled off in search of Dean. He was going to look young and needy and stupid, and he knew it, but right now he didn't much care: he didn't feel well, and the world was noisy and cold, and he just wanted to tuck under Dean's arm if he were up watching TV, or steal a bite of his sandwich if he were getting a snack; just wanted to be close to him. 

The steps creaked softly beneath his bare feet as he made his way downstairs into the hall and toward the living room, all warm comfort and dim light. There was a fire dying in the hearth, and the ridiculous (pretty) lights on the ridiculous (awesome) Christmas tree Dean had hauled in ahead of the snow were glowing softly in the corner. Dean was sprawled comfortably in Bobby's recliner in the corner, watching TV in worn sweats and an old tee and a pair of Bobby's good thick socks, with some of Bobby’s good whiskey beside him. He hadn't bothered to gel his hair after his shower earlier, and he looked . . . he looked _soft_ , somehow, touchable in a way that he usually didn't, not when he was wrapped in his layers of cotton and denim and flannel and the battered leather of their father's coat. The sight of him woke an ache in Sam's gut that was a living thing, heavy and alive.

He didn't understand how he was supposed to survive loving Dean this much.

Dean looked around as he heard him come in to the living room, a fine line of worry between his beautiful eyes. 'Hey, little brother,' he said. 'What are you doin' up, huh?'

The wind gusted, roaring, and for a brief, dizzying moment Sam swore again that he could hear the voices from his dream in it. _King,_ sang the rush of the wind, the sound of the trees, the rattle of the windows in their frames. _King, our king, the boy king, hail_. 'Couldn't sleep,' he said. He leaned against the doorjamb, feeling hot and chilly at once, and like his skin was a size too small for his bones. 'I don't . . .' He pushed a hand through his tangled hair, squeezed his eyes shut, briefly; memories of his nightmares were waiting for him on the other side, and those eyes, _Dean's_ eyes—

'Sammy,' Dean said—

 _King,_ murmured the hum of the lamp in reply.

—'you okay?'

His head hurt. His chest hurt. He was hearing voices in the fucking lamp. Shaking his head, he shuffled across the room and crawled onto the recliner with his brother, utterly ignoring the warning creak of old springs beneath him and Dean's exasperated 'For Chrissakes, Sammy,' above his head, because as exasperated as Dean might have sounded, he was already wrapping an arm around him all the same, tucking him in against him like Sam was still a little kid; was already tugging Sam’s blanket cape loose to drape over both of them. Sam's bones had finally started to lengthen a little these past couple of months, but he was still almost a foot shorter than Dean and as skinny as he'd been when he was ten, and Bobby's recliner was the size of a freakin' pontoon besides, so there was just space enough for him to stretch out along his brother's side, to cuddle in safe and close. He was five years too old for this, and he knew it, but he felt like hell and he wanted his brother and Dean wasn't pushing him away, and so he couldn't much bring himself to care. 

'You comfy there, Samantha?' Dean asked, wryly. The ache in Sam's chest already seemed less, with the familiar warmth of Dean's body against his, and the hallucinations were fading. _King_ , he thought he heard again, in the crackle of the flames in the hearth, the click of the furnace as it kicked on in the cellar, but it was drowning in the steady, familiar _thump-thump, thump-thump_ of Dean's heart beneath his ear. _King, our king . . . _ 'I'd offer to let you watch _My Little Pony_ or somethin', but I don't think it's on this late.'

Sam pushed his face contentedly into his chest. 'Shut up,' he mumbled.

Dean scritched his nails across his scalp, softly, calloused fingers gentle in his hair. 'You're warm, kiddo,' he said, quietly. 'You take your temp when you got up?'

He nodded, tiredly. 'Took some Tylenol,' he said. 'It'll come down in a little bit.'

'How high?' Dean asked.

'Hundred one.'

'Liar.' Dean's voice was iron, but his hand stayed gentle in his hair. 'Sam. How high?'

' . . . hundred three,' he admitted, quietly. Point nine, but hell, he wasn’t rounding up. 'I don't . . . I was _better_ earlier; I don't—'

'Doc said it was gonna take a couple days for the meds to kick in, right?’ Dean said, quietly, and Sam just shrugged, because he didn’t—the doctor he’d seen at the clinic the other night, there’d been something . . . there'd been something _wrong_ with him, though Sam couldn’t have said what, didn’t even know how to try. Dean, right there in the exam room with him, hadn’t noticed a thing, and their dad had thanked the man and shaken his hand in the waiting room after, and so Sam had been inclined to chalk it up to his fever or imagination. But all the same, there’d been something almost covetous in the way the doctor's hands had felt on Sam’s skin as he’d examined him, and something in the way he’d looked at him that had made Sam’s skin crawl; it had reminded him, inexplicably, of the creepy old man whose dogs had once scared the hell out of him two years ago in a trailer park in Maine. '—gonna start really feelin' better in a couple more days, okay?’ Dean was saying. ‘By Christmas, right? 'S what the doc said? 'S real soon, Sammy.'

Sam thought of the driveway outside, empty save for Bobby's truck and snow. ' . . . not soon enough for Dad,' he replied, voice soft and more bitter than he meant it to be. It shouldn't bother him as much as it did, Sam knew; their father had never been good about holidays (and Sam didn't even care about Christmas; he _didn't_ ), and he'd never been the one to take care of Sam when he was sick, anyway, and yeah, Sam got that there was a witch in southern Iowa doing blood magic and that someone needed to put him in the ground. But John's leaving had still hurt, all the same, the more so because he'd wanted to take Dean with him.

 _Dad, he has pneumonia_, Dean had snapped, as angry as Sam had ever heard him. He'd sat wrapped in a blanket listening at the top of the stairs the morning after he'd seen Dr. Craddock, Bobby asleep down the hall and his father and brother arguing in the kitchen below. _His temp's a hundred fuckin' four. You know why he has pneumonia and a temp that high? Because you wouldn't listen when I told you we needed to get him to a goddamned doctor in Preston; you just put the kid in the car and you drove for eighteen hours, and now instead of havin’ a crap case of bronchitis he's practically hackin’ up a lung. I'm not leavin' him. You gotta go chase somethin' with Jim instead of callin' Caleb or Annie to head out there instead, you go do what you gotta do, Dad. But he's sick, it's Christmas, and I'm stayin' here with Sammy._

Part of Sam still wanted to wriggle like a puppy in delight every time he thought of it— _me, he chose me; he loves me best_—but he knew how much Dean hated fighting with their dad, and he knew how much he'd been looking forward to having the three of them together with Bobby for Christmas, and he knew that two weeks ago Dean had nicked a Santa hat from the dollar store in Preston and stashed it at the bottom of his bag, along with a bottle of Maker's Mark for Bobby and a new boot knife for their father and something wrapped tightly in newspaper with a Post-It note stuck on it that read OPEN THIS SAM AND I WILL KILL YOU. (Sam hadn't opened it, though he'd smiled for half the day after.) He tucked a tentative arm around Dean's ribs, felt Dean's mouth brush gently over his hair. His brother let him stay curled into his side for a little while without speaking, while the last few scenes of _A Christmas Story_ flickered past on the TV.

'You wanna stay up for awhile, kiddo?' Dean asked at last, as the credits started rolling. He reached for the remote as Sam nodded, flicked through a number of channels. 'The guide thing earlier? Said we got _'S a Wonderful Life_ on, like, three stations. Also _The Santa Clause_ and somethin' with Jesus.'

'Not watchin' George Bailey,' he mumbled, because he wasn't; he was sick, and Dean had to be nice to him.

'Sammy, c'mon, man, that's a fuckin' classic,' he replied. 'Every time a bell rings, an angel gets . . . laid, or somethin'.'

Sam shook his head, resolutely. He didn't like that movie, never had. George gave up everything he'd ever wanted to take care of his family, over and over again, and then when he thought he'd failed them (even though he _hadn't_ , even though nothing had been his fault _at all_ ), his little brother wasn't there to save him. It was a crap movie, seriously. 'Nope,' he said.

Dean sighed. 'You're a freakin' Grinch, Sammy-Sam,' he informed him, but he kept scanning through the channels anyway. 

'—Bead Magic can be _yours_ for the bargain price of—' promised a enthusiastic woman with terrifyingly teased hair.

'—do the booking; all our pens have turned to inkcicles!' a rat informed Ebenezer Scrooge.

'—make more than a dollar ninety-eight, I'd be very surprised,' said John McClane, and Sam could feel the rumble of Dean's sudden, happy laugh in his brother's chest. He lifted his head to look up at him, smiling, found Dean already grinning back.

’Yeah?’ Dean asked, tugging lightly on his hair, and Sam nodded, happily, because there was, as Dean had once wisely pointed out, nothing that said “Christmas” quite like bombs and guns and bad guys getting sucked into airplane engines. Dean tossed the remote back on the side table and reached for his whiskey, kept his other hand buried in Sam’s hair, palm cupping the back of his skull, fingers still rubbing now and again along his scalp, idle and slow. The curl of heat that it woke in Sam’s belly—part comfort, part wanting—chased away the last lingering chill from his dream, and he was warm and his lungs were quiet when he tumbled gently back in to sleep.

***

He woke, coughing, maybe an hour later, the TV still on, John complaining about normal holidays and motherfuckin’ tin cans. Dean let him drink off the last of his whiskey to settle his chest, and Sam fell asleep again to the sound of carols and gunfire and the steady rhythm of his brother’s heartbeat beneath his ear.

***

It was dim and quiet when he woke the second time, halfway up the stairs and cradled like a little kid in his brother’s arms. Sam didn’t bother to pretend he hadn’t woken, because Dean would have known; Dean always knew, and so he just shifted a little to wrap both his arms around his brother's neck and tuck his face into the curve of his shoulder. Dean huffed softly as he hefted him a little higher against his chest. 'Such a girl, Sammy,' he said, but his voice was gentle, and he made no move to put his brother down, and so Sam just bit lightly at his collarbone in drowsy retaliation and tried not to fixate on the taste of his brother's skin ( _almond salt soap Dean_ ). He felt sleepy and not entirely . . . not entirely here, somehow, but _Dean_ was here, Dean was right here, and he was warm and strong and beautiful and he wasn't ever going to let anything hurt Sam, never ever, and so everything was okay.

The bed was still unmade from where he'd left it a few hours ago, and Dean set him down easily in the messy nest of blankets, pulled most of them down to the foot of the bed. ‘Fever’s comin’ down, little brother,’ he said, softly. ‘Gonna let it come down just a little more, okay? Blankets'll be here if you need 'em later.' Sam lay quietly, watching him. His eyes were chocolate-dark in the dim light spilling in from the hall, and his hair was feathering soft across his forehead like it almost never did, and his lashes were as thick and long and pretty as Angharad Rosser's, the Welsh girl who'd liked Sam so in Boston, who'd kissed him shyly on the bus to Quincy Market with cherry lip gloss on her mouth.

’Quit starin' at me, squirt,' Dean said, softly, pulling just the top sheet straight and smooth around and over him, tucking him in the same way he had when he was little, and Sam blushed, but he didn't look away. Couldn't. Didn't want to. It was dark and snowy and he was sleepy and safe and alone with Dean, and the whiskey had put a glow in his chest which made the world seem full of lovely impossible things, and so he reached up to trace his brother's mouth with the edge of his thumb. Dean had the most beautiful mouth of anyone he knew, chapped and full and _soft_ , it always looked so soft, it _was_ soft, and Dean was staring at him wide-eyed and utterly still as Sam tugged gently at his lower lip to feel the silken wet of it against his skin.

 _I love you_ , he wanted to say, so badly, and he didn’t see how anyone could blame him for it, not when Dean drove away his nightmares just by breathing, and didn’t make him watch stupid movies about oddball angels of the Lord; not when he carried him upstairs when he was tired and sick, even though he was fourteen and too old to be coddled like a baby; not when he was . . . was _Dean_ , brave and funny and good and beautiful. He pushed, just a little, felt the soft scrape of Dean’s teeth parting around the top of his thumb, felt the rough silk of his tongue against his skin. ‘Dean,’ he whispered, and for half a dizzy heartbeat he thought he saw something wild and gentle and wanting in his brother’s face, something that made his own stomach clench with nervous anticipation, but then Dean had a vice-tight grip around his wrist and was pulling his hand gently away from his face, from his beautiful mouth, was tucking it to the pillow beside Sam’s head, and Sam made an unhappy, bewildered sound, because he didn't _want_ to let go of Dean; he hadn’t—

'De—'

'Sammy, you gotta go to sleep.' His brother’s voice sounded oddly unsteady in the dark. 'Please, little brother. Okay? Please. Just . . . I shouldn’t have given you that whiskey earlier; you’re just a little drunk, ‘s all. You gotta go to sleep.'

Sam would’ve argued with that, he really would have, but on his back in the big soft bed, where everything seemed soft and warm and smelled like Tide and Downy and him and Dean, it was getting hard to keep his eyes open. He lifted a hand to fist in the soft cotton of Dean’s tee, wanting to tell him to stay, wanting to keep him close, and he never knew when he fell asleep.

*** 

Late that night, Sam dreamed again of yellow eyes, and an iron throne, and a broken, burning crown.

He dreamed again of black dogs at his side, and of the taste of blood in his mouth, and of the smell of sulfur on his skin; he dreamed again of the destruction of cities, and he dreamed of the eyes and bloody face of a dead man he could not, would not, name—though the eyes were brown, this time, not green, and shadowed by a ruined trucker's cap his hounds had shredded beneath their claws.

He dreamed again of his brother. But this time Dean wasn't dead: this time Dean was standing beside him. This time Dean was laughing, black-eyed, _white_ -eyed, and this time when Sam woke, burning again with fever and shaking in the dark, with Dean gone and the wind calling through the walls, every piece of furniture in the room was shaking with him, and he was too afraid to scream.


End file.
